Any recommendations for 456M ECU Repair Refurbishment?

https://www.ecudoctors.com/

Based on my past business dealings with them (456GT window ECU) I'd recommend them. They may not be inexpensive or particularly fast, but their work can be trusted.

 

Really??? Very surprised. That's their bred and butter.

Seen many accounts from other users on this site having their ECU's fixed there.

But, hey, I believe you - just scratching my head.

 

Any fault codes? What were the symptoms when they did fail? e.g. Did you lose the signals to your coilpacks resulting in no spark? I recall there are common power transistors which send signals to the coilpacks which can fail. Unfortunately, there are a few specialised chips in them (including immobiliser circuits) which are a complete mystery.

If you can't find anyone to fix them, I would open them up and see if there is any obvious damage (burnt components, broken circuit board tracks, leaking capacitors, etc).

 

When were they last evaluated by Specialized ECU Repair? They now offer an exchange service which might be a better option.

 

You can try sending them back to Bosch in Germany, but you will need to be a registered workshop and set up an account. They claim that they can fix but I wouldn’t get too excited.

https://www.bosch-repair-service.com/en/engine-control-unit/bosch/m5-2-0261204186001/

I had a unit fail in my 550 and I had the local Ferrari dealer set up an account and send my faulty unit to them. Unfortunately they couldn’t find anything wrong, they were communicating with the dealer for additional information such as codes and symptoms but still came up blank. ECU was sent back and re tried in car and still faulty - ended up having to purchase new unit.

One of the issues is that the firmware is proprietary and not even the dealer has access to this so difficult to diagnose.

My unit was only throwing the Check Engine light but there were no faults with the car.

Good luck, keep us posted if you have success. I would also like to get mine repaired and kept as a backup/spare

 

I'm trying to understand how you ended up with 2 faulty units. Were they fitted to your car and failed simultaneously? Have you had any recent battery/alternator problems?

Also, you say they seem to come back ok. Do you mean that the car runs normally, but when you test them with an OBD2 reader, you see lots of messages? Do you have a CEL?

Ghost units? Is this like saying they have "gremlins" or is this a semi-technical expression?

 

Yup. Despite the internal and external protections, some ECUs do occasionally get fried by excessive voltage. It's still a mystery why yours are passing bench checks, however. Maybe they've developed a sensitivity to minor voltage variations (if that at all is possible)? I assume a bench setup provides a fairly stable power supply. Normally, the ECUs can operate with a reasonably wide range of battery/alternator voltages. They also generate fault messages for out of tolerance voltages. Perhaps you could ask the ECU Doctors if they do check ECU performance under varying voltage conditions?

 

There's a guy in Toronto by the name of Mark D'Sylva, owns a company called EAT. He is a wizard with this stuff. He repairs the old Motronic stuff for all the local dealers, and does a lot of BMW tuning on the side. I've dealt with him firsthand, good work and solid guy. I'll pm you his contact info.

 

Any chance you could post up his contact info? Sounds like he could be a great resource for this community. I did a brief Google search for his company and came up dry.

 

Messaged you. I'm not sure he'll want his email out in public, but here's his old website:
http://www3.sympatico.ca/mdsylva/

 

Please do; I am really curious what you find out.

 

Paul- Check with Trev, too.